Albuquerque, NM - HDTV - Page 13

DTV off-air in Los Alamos!

Just wanted to post a note that KOAT is coming in loud-and-clear up in Los Alamos. I'm getting a rock-solid 100/100 on my Mitsu 5000 box using a Radio Shack 190 antenna on my roof. This is the first off-air DTV signal I've seen up in Los Alamos, and it's great! Thanks KOAT for upping the power. Still looking for KOB and KRQE; perhaps later this month...

Joe M

That is Awesome! Hopefully I wll be getting my ne wSTB in a couple of days! Woot!

JQ

The other transmitter is for Portales or Las Cruces. Jim Gale is doing all the PBS affiliates in NM.

That's correct. Next week look for antenna installation activity on top the crest for KRQE (CBS) digital.

Last Saturday and Sunday KOAT had some nice looking movies and programs being presented in widescreen high-definition. Things look promising.

Hope KRQE has good luck this week installing their antenna. They shouldn't have any problems with the weather this week THANK GOD.

Hi everyone
Saturday night I tuned in KOAT and the "Sixth Sense" was on. It looked so good that I asked my wife to come down and watch. She was hooked until 10:00 pm, when they switched to the local news upconvert in the middle of the movie! My wife was not happy. They need to come up with a rational plan if they want to gain support for this great new technology from the regular public. Explaining that this can be expected for new technology did not impress my wife. Cheers, Horton

PLEASE !!! PLEASE !!! PLEASE !!!

Whenever you see problems with KOAT passing through the HD programming to us then send an email to John Trambley, Program Director. He has been very responsive to emails I sent him. He should hear from more than just me. If they feel a little more pressure then they may just get their act together and consistently send the HD stuff to us. Send email to: jtrambley@hearst.com. Thanks, Fred.

I have listed above the email for the program director at KOAT (jtrambley@hearst.com). Here is the email address for KRQE of someone who responds: frank.lilley@krqe.com (director of engineering).

You all may want to write a letter to Hubbard Broadcasting in Minneasota for KOB (NBC). They still need to purchase the high-definition encoder/decoder unit to pass the high-definition content to us. They are probably reluctant to do so since there is not much HD content on NBC right now. Their address is:

Stanley Hubbard
Hubbard Broadcasting
3415 University Avenue
St. Paul, Minn. 55114

You can also go to their web sites and go to their "contact us" department.

Below is the reply to my nice e-mail to Mr. Trambley. What a pleasure to have people respond rapidly!

Did anyone else have this problem with the 6th Sense, or was I halucinating? I suspect the engineer switched to the west coast feed sometime Saturday night. Horton

"Dear Dr. Newsom:

I discussed your email with the chief engineer. KOAT-DT is airing ABC's East Coast Feed live at 6:00-9:00pm (local time) except on Sundays when it is live at 5:00-9:00pm (local time). This means the movie should have ended at 9:00pm. Then, starting at 9:00pm, you should have rejoined our main signal from KOAT-TV and you would have seen the remainder of the movie (for a second time) and then our local news at 10:00pm.

I'm not certain what happened to prevent your viewing the end of this movie.

Please let us know if you have additional difficulties.

Thank you for taking the time to write to KOAT.

Sincerely,

John Trambley
Program Director"

If you had a C-band dish in your backyard, you could have watched the SIXTH SENSE twice in HDTV on Saturday! 8^)

What happens is that Monday-Saturday, ABC's HDTV feed is shared - the East time zone HDTV feeds from 6:00-9:00pm Mountain and Pacific time zone HDTV feeds from 9:00pm to 12:00am Mountain.

On Sunday, due to the longer primetime, there are 2 separate HDTV feeds from ABC to their affiliates and no sharing goes on.

From reading the posts, obviously what happened is that East Coast SIXTH SENSE fed from 6:00-9:00pm and KOAT forgot to switch off the HDTV feed so the first hour of the SIXTH SENSE pacific feed was shown before the switch was made to the upconverted 10pm local news.

Robert

I had a very nice note from Frank Lilley regarding KRQE's planned broadcast power. It differs from what was posted earlier in this thread, so I'd thought I'd pass this along. We're very fortunate to have such dedicated and responsive broadcasters here in NM, BTW.

Joe M.
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KRQE-TV's plans are to test around the 30kW level. We are doing this to insure that our RF levels do not exceed FCC RF radiation standards at the transmitter site. If we are in compliance, we will then increase power to 75kW, which is our licensed power for channel 16.

When we are up, I would greatly appreciate any input you have about our signal.

Franklin Lilley
Director of Engineering
KRQE-TV

I am very happy that both KOAT and KRQE have been responsive to our emails.

I just spoke with Jim Gale and he said that KRQE should be mounting their antenna tomorrow, Wednesday, and there is a possibility that they may be up and running by the end of the week. No promises though.

KOB has mounted their new antenna but are still connecting it up.

Exciting times !!!

Has anyone seen any antenna installation action atop the Sandias?

CALL TO ARMS !!! CALL TO ARMS !!!

CALL TO ARMS !!! CALL TO ARMS !!!

I wanted to watch "Air Force One" tonight on KOAT and it is not in HD. I called the engineering dept. just now at the station and they said there is probably something wrong at the crest. It didn't seem like they felt any urgency to resolve the problem. I urge all of you when you see this to call them up at 884-7777 then press 2 for engineering. We need to let them know that there is more than one person watching their HD digital station. This kind of thing would be TOTALLY unacceptable on their current analog station if the picture was screwed up.

If anyone is out there tonight you may give them a call now to let them know you ARE WATCHING.

Thanks, Fred.

Fred,

According to most reports, AFO was not broadcast in HDTV. So I don't think it was an issue with KOAT. Check the following thread:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...hreadid=140586

Tomorrow should have Dinosaur in HD. If it ain't, then it's time to yell!

Regards, Peter

I saw a good portion of Dinosaur tonight and it looked GREAT. I wonder when KOAT will be equiped with DD 5.1 sound? I am glad they were playing it after 5 pm when I turned on my set.

This may be old news but I got this from KRQE last Wednesday.

Hi Fred,

The antenna installation is going well. We were slowed down by high winds last week, but this week has been great. I have an antenna engineer scheduled for Saturday to do a final sweep of the line and antenna. This is the last step before applying transmitter power to the system. Monday we will start testing, you should start see some pictures at that point. We are still scheduled for June 1st to start broadcasting.

Thanks for inquiry, and please let me know how our service looks out in TV land.

Franklin Lilley
Director of Engineering
KRQE-TV

I just did a scan for new channels and there it was big as day. 13-1. Right now it looks as though it's just a digital version of what's on the analog (like what KOB was doing) but hey, it's more than what they had. Please oh please have something Hi Def tonight.

GOOD NEWS!

Hey RipClaw - welcome to the forum. I wonder how many NMDTV viewers there are out there?

I just did a scan of the digital channels just now and it did not pick up KRQE. Did they turn it off for the night. Is anyone still getting it? Thanks, Fred.

KRQE in Los Alamos - a few notes

The signal was moderately strong up here on the hill (got 56/100 on my Mitsu HD400 box) and at this level, the picture had a few artifacts and dropouts (a few a minute or so). I'm hoping they were testing at the 30kW level before they boost to the 75kW licensed power mentionned previously. (Also note my antenna location is less than ideal; I'm in a valley and can't get a good line-of-site to the crest)

A few comments on the picture: they stretched the NTSC to something less than 16:9 (it looked like a 14:9 stretch to me). For my tastes, this was great. I prefer the stretched pictures over the side bars, and the KRQE stretch was less distorted than the 16:9 stretches I usually do on my own. The picture was brighter than the KOAT feed as well (has anyone else noticed that KOAT is a bit dim with a touch too much contrast compared to other HD sources such as HBO-HD and HD-NET?).

Regardless, much thanks to KRQE for also going on-line today, and I'm happy to say us distant viewers look like we'll have another option for off-air viewing very soon.

Joe Martz
Los Alamos

I decided to check out the off-air stations for the first time in a while and I couldn't find KOB-DT and KNME-DT stations on the air. KOAT-DT was strong as could be.

When my STB didn't find them, I checked the spectrum with my spectrum analyzer and not a trace of KOB-DT and KNME-DT either. Are both down for maintenance/upgrading as we speak?

Robert

Good to hear KRQE-DT is finally testing - that was the big HDTV station to get as it was not available to me from satellite and they do carry a few sporting events that I would watch in HD.

Robert